Brinno PeepHole Viewer PHV1330 Review

Knock knock! Who’s there? Now you’ll know with the PeepHole Viewer PHV1330 from Brinno, which records images outside your door onto a microSD card and has a 3″ LCD display on the inside for your viewing.

Regular peepholes are great, with a few shortcomings: You have to be the right height to use them for one thing, and you don’t have a record of who comes to the door. Brinno’s PeepHole Viewer solves those issues.

And if the intruder has a floating head and knife, you'll know for sure.

Box contents. Batteries included.

MicroSD card (not included) goes under a rubber flap.

Controls on the right side. Note the small slider switch for brightness control.

Feeding time! The PHV1330 takes two AA batteries. Note the small void in the upper half? That's for an optional motion or knock sensor.

The included peephole is fed through the washer and black lock ring. The PHV1330 attaches to the black lock ring.

PHV1330 on my front door.

How it works:

Brinno suggests using the included peephole, which gives a wide angle view, and fits into doors with a maximum thickness of about 2 to 2-1/4 inches. I didn’t need to drill a hole since my door already had a peephole, but the included peephole needs a hole of about 1/2″ diameter.

Normally, the Brinno PHV1330 sits there. The screen is dark. If someone comes to your door, you press the button just below the screen, and the camera image pops up. Still shots are recorded for a few seconds and saved to the microSD card.

Me, as captured by the Brinno PHV1330. Don't expect all your guests to be sleepy with bed head.

You’ll note that our main door faces a corridor in our condo. Lighting is the same around the clock. Still, I found better results if I had the brightness/gain switch set to “low light” mode (see icon in upper left corner). There’s not a lot of detail; you can’t really make out the SF Giants logo on my orange shirt. But the time/date stamp is a nice touch.

Speaking of the time/date stamp, read the instructions on setting it. I spent about 3-5 min trying to set it myself without opening the manual and failed.

The Brinno PHV1330 did exactly what it says, but I’m not totally convinced it’s any easier than peeking through a glass peephole that doesn’t require batteries. The PHV1330 takes a second to turn on when you press the button. Peepholes are instantaneous. But then again, peepholes can’t record images with a time/date stamp, either!

@Dmitriy: The spot outside my door is poor enough. You can imagine how much worse the images will be if the subject is in lower lighting or is backlit. (The image of me in the hallway was already set to “low light” mode.)

Hi ive just bought the Brinno 1330. Never knew there’s 133012 & 133014. Even the salesperson didn’t explain much.
Now the problem is, after removing my current standard peephole, i realised the hole is too big for the Brinno peephole.
I was devastated. Bought it for SGD$235.
Is there anyway I can fix this issue?